


i have weathered the storm (and continue to)

by ZephyrEden



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Introspection, from bbs to post kh3, so kh3 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-13
Updated: 2019-09-13
Packaged: 2020-10-17 18:42:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20625746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZephyrEden/pseuds/ZephyrEden
Summary: there was life before the door. there was life after the door. if he has to think back on his life, everything falls into one of the two categories.for as long as he can remember, life has always been after the door.my piece for the Road to Dawn zine.





	i have weathered the storm (and continue to)

i.

“Geez, is that really all that’s in here?”

Riku blinks once, twice. All that’s in here? How could Sora think that? Wasn't this the type of secret treasure they'd always dreamed of finding?

He pulls away, his hands hovering in hesitantly curled fists a breath away from the wood of the door. No lock, no handle, an impenetrable wall recessed into a grip of cold stone.

He’s five years old and already he can tell - something is changing. The voice of the stranger on the beach hasn’t stopped echoing in his head for two days. Only the roar of wind from the mouth of the cave could break through.

He swallows, saying words that don't match his feelings once he realizes the silence will end up drawing Sora’s attention. “What do you expect in a boring place like this?”

There’s a feeling welling up inside him, one that comes with the breath of a whisper niggling at the back of his head, exciting ideas of adventure filling his head from someplace beyond himself.

“Hey, Sora.” Sora turns towards him, a curious glint in his eye as he regards his best friend. “When we grow up, let’s get off this island. We’ll go on real adventures, not this kid’s stuff!”

“Sure!” Sora readily agrees, a smile on his face for a moment before it falls. “But isn’t there anything fun to do now?”

Riku shakes his head, but follows as Sora leads the way out of the cave he brought them to in the first place.

“Hey, you know the new girl at the mayor’s house?” Sora asks, but Riku is getting distracted again, something in his head telling him to turn around. “Did you hear? She arrived on the night of the meteor shower!” he continues in excitement, but Riku has stopped listening.

He stands, frozen in place, as his eyes glued to the door and the gleaming keyhole that has made a home in its center. He feels its presence like a hole in his chest - gaping, visceral, impossibly empty and inviting to the shadows that live in this place.

“Riku?” Sora calls from the near the front of the cave, his voice echoing and mingling with the howling wind.

He snaps out of his reverie, scampering through the winding tunnel and catching up with his best friend. “Hey, I have an idea,” he starts on an exhale, the idea bright and welcoming in his head. “What if we kept this place a secret.” Sora gives him a strange look and he quickly continues. “We won’t tell the other kids on the island, only you and me will know about it.” He holds his breath tight in his chest so he can feel the space fill up.

“Hmm… okay!” he grins at Riku. “It’ll be our secret place.”

Riku smiles back, his lips stretched too thin to be comfortable. Sora runs ahead and doesn’t see his smile fall. He doesn’t see the last lingering look Riku throws over his shoulder to the door.

ii.

Riku grits his teeth as he sneaks through the entrance to the Secret Place. He keeps his eyes focused straight ahead. For years, he’s told himself it’s because he’s concentrated on what lies at the end. Every day, his thoughts chip away at the denial; maybe it’s not that he’s looking at the door, but that he’s avoiding looking at the walls. At the drawings that showed up one day when he wasn’t looking. There’s no point in looking. Not at the walls, at least.

The door is worth looking at. He sucks his teeth in a quick _tsk_ at the sight of it. No keyhole. It’s been a while since he’s seen it, not since the beginning of the school year, the beginning of another stretch of being separated into a bigger group of mainlanders instead of the group his friends are in.

The memory makes him scowl.

Clenching his jaw tighter, he tries to find a handle on the door, any hold he could grip to force it open. When frustration finally gets the better of him, he tears his gloves off with gnashing teeth. His fingertips are red even now, bruised and tender, but it doesn’t stop him from pressing bitten fingernails and swollen digits into the grooves of the wood and gaps in the stone. He hisses when splinters dig into the callusing skin, only giving up when pinpricks of red bubble up from the surface. Not that it matters.

He knows, even as he pulls the wooden needles from his fingertips, that any bloodstain left on the door tonight will be gone tomorrow. As long as the door remains immovable, so too shall his presence be unrecognized by it.

There’s a tension pulling his shoulders towards each other that he ignores as he waits for nightfall. It’s only when the shadows grow that he feels safe enough to sneak in, when the moonlight pooling through the open roof is the only light available. The only light he needs.

He’s tense and unfocused. His first mistake. A glimpse at the door confirms there’s no keyhole. His peripheries confirm something else.

A new addition to the one drawing that just _had_ to be next to the door. An addition that wasn’t there yesterday, he’s certain.

Against his better judgment, he feels his head slowly turning towards the wall. The sharp rock used to carve the star is still there, discarded on the ground now that it’s not needed. Useless. Meaningless.

He grits his teeth and forces himself not to relate.

A splash of yellow appears in the corner of his eye and his head whips towards it, despite already knowing what it has to be before he moves.

His blood is thrumming, rushing through his ears so loudly that he can pretend the suffocating sensation in his chest is from the waves crashing over him. It doesn’t matter that the ocean is too far to reach.

With a grin too sharp to be pleased and too tight to be genuine, his hands stretch towards the keyhole. The door opens.

iii.

On the rare occasions that he finds himself on the island whilst Sora sleeps in Naminé’s care, he avoids the door at all costs. He’s not scared of it. The fact that he’ll open a corridor just to move from one side of the small island to the other has nothing to do with having to walk past the Secret Place otherwise. It’s a door. An inanimate object. He’s definitely not afraid of it.

The constant nightmares, dripping in vivid detail, where he forces the door open with his own two hands to embrace the glorious darkness once again aren’t making him tread across the sand any lighter.

It doesn’t feel any less lonely when he hides among the shadows as the islanders he used to know run across the beach. Part of him isn't sure why he bothers hiding at all. He knows his presence will go unnoticed regardless. That's the way it has to be.

He’s not scared of the islands. He's not scared of the door.

Almost as if his body was trying to prove how unafraid he was, he finds his eyes drifting towards the cave any time his focus wavers, any blink of distraction leading him to it. Some part of him wonders why he bothers wearing a blindfold when his senses paint a scene so clearly he forgets he can't see it now at all.

He can feel the weight of darkness, a heaviness that has made its home in his chest. On good days it feels like his lungs are being crushed, never able to expand enough to make it feel like he isn't suffocating. Looking towards the door makes it much, much worse. The creaking of palm fronds behind him can be easily mistaken for stretching ribs, the expansion and consumption of himself by something meant to devour from the inside out. It continues unchecked until the thrumming darkness moving through his veins leaves shadows wafting delicately from his fingers.

It's a gift. A gift from the door, from the voice that whispered promises of a glorious future as he forced it open.

Opened gifts can't be returned. He knows that.

He clenches his fists to extinguish the darkness, grits his teeth to keep himself in check. The door doesn't own him and he doesn't owe the door anything, either.

That's what he tells himself as he takes a corridor to move to the other side of the island.

iv.

He avoids the door. It's not an act of denial anymore. It's self preservation.

He knows a lot about self preservation. It's been a necessary skill in his survival this last year, one that he has continued learn the longer he stays alive, himself, in one piece.

That’s what he tells himself, at least, when he walks past the waterfall next time. There's a sudden tightness in his chest that is jaw-achingly unbearable, a pain that wells up like a slowly inflating balloon in his throat until the lack of oxygen forces tears to prick at the corners of his eyes.

He can't even entertain the possibility of going to the door. It's impossible. He’s certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he will die before reaching it.

It doesn’t matter that Sora has forgiven him. It doesn’t matter that the days on the island are hauntingly similar to the way they were before. There’s a churning ocean inside of him that no makeshift raft can sail across; a treacherous sea whose only desire is to pull him down, down, down until his back presses against the rocks and sand at the bottom. He looks at the place where the door is hidden, and the pressure from being at the bottom of the ocean is altogether too much and never enough. He thinks asphyxiation wouldn’t be a bad way to go, if giving in to the sensation would mean it would stop after.

He knows better than that, though. He knows better than to hope for it to stop. He knows that he doesn’t deserve for it to stop.

Heart hammering in his chest, he stumbles away from the Secret Place. A life with easy breathing is something he gave up on that night, not long enough ago. He’s no longer allowed to trade the ocean for the shore.

v.

He was only supposed to be here for a moment. A quick zip across worlds, returning home not to celebrate his ascension into the role of master but to pick up Kairi so she could start down the path of master on her own. He was only supposed to be here for a moment, but he thinks it might be okay to tack on an extra minute or two as he stands with his feet planted firmly in the sand.

It’s with a sense of determination that he walks past the waterfall and shadowed alcove, taking purposeful steps past the stone threshold into the Secret Place. His fingers graze the rough surface of the drawings as he walks past them. He looks forward without avoiding them. He doesn’t need to avoid them anymore.

He sees the door and the dull shine of a keyhole within it and he smiles. There’s an ocean within him, but there is no longer a storm. The waves sway in the easy ebb they were made for, a gentle reminder of his past mistakes. The sting of regret has eased, the waters familiar as they lap at his ankles, his legs steady on the sand as he finds his place amongst both the sea and the shore.

The tingling sensation of his keyblade calling buzzes in his fingertips but doesn’t continue forward into materialization. With a deep breath, he presses his hand flat to the wood of the door and all at once the howling wind rushes past him, its echo rumbling in his bones.

“Thank you.” His voice is quiet but the cave still hears it, the sound of it reverberating pleasantly throughout the cavern until it escapes to the outside world.

Here, he’s caught in the delicate balance between sea, sky, and shore. Here, where every step he’s taken has led back to.

He smiles. “I won’t let you down.”

vi.

The Secret Place was meant to be just that - a secret. He’s grateful that it has mostly remained that way, the island’s newcomers all distracted by the waves and the beach and the mesmerizing sunset that allow him to slip away from the group unseen. A place that once held his fear and obsessions —- he supposes it’s only fitting that now in his time of unease it has become a sanctuary from those thoughts, as well.

Things didn’t go according to plan. It’s not his fault. It’s not the door’s fault. Maybe it isn’t even Sora’s fault, regardless of the fact that it was Sora’s own decision that led them to this point.

The waves aren’t rising to cover him, but there’s a storm brewing, and Riku can sense the wind from it forcing the stagnation from his lungs.

It is not enough to keep waiting.

His feet have sunken into the sand enough to anchor him, a humble expression of control. The storm will not overtake him this time. It will not overtake him, but with his own power he will become the storm.

It’s not his fault.

His fingers curl against the familiar surface of well worn wood in frustration, jaw tight as he grits his teeth without grinding them. He has learned to stop taking the blame for every moment after the door.

It’s not his fault, but it feels like it is, in the same way it sometimes feels like it's his fault for not stopping things that are out of his control. He is tired of wasting his time thinking like this. He is tired of wasting his time waiting.

There’s a voice echoing in his head, the sound of it so similar to a whisper he heard when he was young. “It is time to move on, boy.”

It is not enough to keep waiting.

He’s opened the door before. All he needs now is a different door to open.

He stares at the keyhole with its dull light and knows there is something else worth looking at. He turns away and lets his hand drop from the door, ready to become the storm.

**Author's Note:**

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